Dead Rising

The end of the current generation of video game consoles has brought a huge resurrection of "classic" titles. We've seen Nintendo re-release the core Mario games for the GBA and Nintendo DS. Square is in the process of re-releasing as many Final Fantasy games as they can for the GBA. And Atari, Midway, and Capcom are releasing a ton of their old arcade games for various platforms.

Probably the biggest of the re-releases is Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting for Xbox Live Arcade. As you know, I'm a huge fan of the Street Fighter series but I'm not totally happy with the Xbox Live Arcade's version. My gripe is that the game is stupidly difficult. I don't know if it's just because I've lost all the skill I once had over the years, if it's because the Xbox 360's directional pad just plain sucks ass, or if it's because Capcom went and decided to make the game more difficult just for the hell of it. Either way, it's not very much fun to get your ass kicked by the cheap AI of the 3rd fighter (of 12) on the default difficulty. (I blame the 360's controller for sucking... I never had difficulty problems with Street Fighter II Anniversary Collection.)

Sadly, I don't have an active Xbox Live Gold account, so I can't test the online portion of the game. But, from what I hear, it is hard to find someone to fight a ranked match against.

Bringing back retro titles for new gamers is good, in my opinion. I'd personally love to see the newer gamers get a greater understanding of gaming history, but I doubt most of today's gamers would understand the significance of why some of these games are classics. (Most aren't, but that's for another blog.) However, knowing companies for being companies and following capitalism, they're only re-releasing their older games because it's an easy and cheap way to make money.

It may just be me, but these re-releases never play the same as they used to. I don't remember Mega Man being so damn difficult, nor was Mega Man X for that matter. Again, is it just my getting old and forgetting how to play or is it because of the controller? Mega Man Anniversary Collection for GameCube sucked because some genius at Capcom decided to switch the shoot and jump buttons around. It's just not the way I'm used to playing Mega Man. For me at least, changing the feel of the controller for a given game seems to really screw up my timing. =(

Well, since this blog post is titled Dead Rising, here's a music video for Capcom's amazingly fun game Dead Rising.